SOUTHERN LIGHTS: Eccentric jazz musician made impact on Alabama

By Ben Windham

Published: Sunday, June 16, 2013 at 3:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Saturday, June 15, 2013 at 7:29 p.m.

BIRMINGHAM | Sun Ra, standing at night in front of the metal fence surrounding the White House in Washington, D.C., stares directly into the camera. He says he looks across the street but doesn’t see a Black House.

The audience in Birmingham’s Carver Theater — many of them older African-Americans, and some veterans of the city’s civil rights movements — murmurs its approval and appreciation.

“You right, brother!” a man behind me says to the image on the movie screen.

But Sun Ra — who sometimes espoused black nationalism — isn’t talking about race. He’s expounding his philosophy of the co-existence of opposites.

If there is a White House, there must be a Black House, he says. If there is a good government, there must be a bad government. Everything must have its opposite to exist.

The audience in the Carver — home of Alabama’s Jazz Hall of Fame — grows silent. It’s not accustomed to talks like this. But Sun Ra goes on and on.

In the film, he looks remarkably like Viola Titus, our black housekeeper with whom I spent many an hour of my younger years. But she never, to my knowledge, walked among ancient Egyptian carvings and talked about the cosmos, as the musician/band leader/poet/philosopher was doing throughout the documentary film, “Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise.”

The movie was shown at the Carver earlier this month as part of a celebration of the life and work of Sun Ra, who would have turned 99 this year.

He told some interviewers that he came from Mars or Saturn or even outside of the solar system, but his sister was more prosaic. She knew he was from Earth, “because I got on my knees and peeped through the keyhole” to see him being born in Birmingham on May 22, 1914.

He died — some say he simply “left the planet” — in the same city on May 30, 1993. There’s a grave with his birth name, Herman Poole Blount, on it at Elmwood Cemetery.

Whatever the case, in his 79 years on Earth he developed an astonishing lifestyle that was centered on music, the only medium by which humanity could be saved, he believed.

Ra came to music at an early age. In Birmingham, when he was still known as Sonny Blount, he formed an orchestra that was a kind of opposite of the formal, dress-up black band of John T. “Fess” Whatley, whose engagements included toney over-the-mountain society dances.

Sun Ra’s band, by contrast, was a rag-tag ensemble that played in the housing projects and rehearsed endlessly in his ramshackle house opposite Birmingham’s train station.

Eighty-five-year-old Frank “Doc” Adams, a charter member and second executive director of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, knew Blount and Whatley well. He played in both men’s groups.

Whatley insisted on precision, proper intonation and the ability to read music. He instilled in Adams a lifelong desire to learn and teach.

But Blount made a lasting impression, too.

He would “walk the streets of Birmingham with all the crazy garb on, these Egyptian robes and peculiar hats,” Adams recalls in the book, “Doc,” a beautiful evocation of black life in The Magic City.

Police would tell Blount to get off the street because he was scaring people.

He was scaring the police, as a matter of fact.

But Blount stood up for himself. He told the cops that if they used a billy club on him, they would become paralyzed. He could do it because he was from Mars, he said.

The police believed him, according to Adams, and left him alone.

One day at the Masonic Temple, Blount had Adams play a solo. Adams, who doubled on clarinet and alto sax, says that it was horrible, just “a monotony of sound.”

“But he said to me that it sounded perfect,” Adams recalls in “Doc,” and the remark “built up my confidence … He said what’s in you will come out.”

It did, both in Blount and Adams.

Blount changed his name to Sun Ra and led a group of like-minded musicians whom he called the Arkestra. Performing all over the globe, he developed a massive cult following that resulted in the issuance of dozens of albums — studio, live, even rehearsals — during his life and after his death/departure.

A resident at times of places like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, Ra became one of the most controversial figures in jazz — if what he played can be called “jazz” at all.

His music was the polar opposite of Duke Ellington’s, but they had in common the individualism and the contradictions that made their groups both jazzy and non-jazzy.

By the end of the 1960s, when I first saw Ra, he was exploring concepts that would take him far afield of musical convention.

On one of my trips to New York City, I asked the cab driver to take me to Slug’s Saloon, an East Village dive where Ra’s Arkestra was playing.

“We don’t get many requests to come down here,” he told me.

The cab pulled up at Slug’s. There was a rotting, busted melon in the middle of street. I didn’t know what I’d gotten into.

I walked cautiously inside; the place was tiny. The Arkestra overflowed the stage. I sat next to one of the drummers.

I soon forgot any trepidations, however. The music and the atmosphere blew them away.

The Arkestra marched and chanted; members wore lights that flashed at odd moments. Ra played electric piano and organ and bashed away on an electrified “sun harp.”

The Arkestra would launch into a familiar theme — like Ellington, Ra recycled his older tunes — and then blast off into space, playing some otherworldly themes and sounds.

Sometimes it roared, sometimes it purred. It went on for hours and hours. The sun was rising when I stumbled out of the club.

From then on, I was hooked on Ra. I saw him and the Arkestra in Birmingham, New Orleans and, memorably, for three nights in a row in Tuscaloosa at the now-defunct Chukker.

By the time of his Tuscaloosa shows, Ra had suffered a stroke; he played from a wheelchair. John Gilmore, considered one of the greatest tenor saxophone players in jazz, was stricken with cancer. You could see him heaving for air and gasping between numbers.

Much of the burden of the music fell on alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who leads a version of the Arkestra today; trumpeter Michael Ray, who has recorded albums with his own group; and drummer and multi-reed man James Jacson, who is featured prominently in the film, “Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise.”

In the 1970s, Ra reined in some of his more outre experiments and began to perform music associated with Walt Disney films. Some people say he identified with Disney because of the fantasy, the love of other-worldliness that the men shared; critics saw it as a commercial ploy.

The Disney era, which lasted through the rest of Ra’s life, did help pay the bills — audiences could identify more with “Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho” than with “Outer Nothingness,” one of the brilliant recordings on “The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra” that I fell in love with during the mid-’60s — but it was Disney like it had never been heard before. It was wild, bent, contorted. Far out.

He and the Arkestra mixed in other, similar compositions with the Disney tunes. Once in a while, they’d throw in a completely “free jazz” piece. Yet Ra insisted that “I have to make sure that every note, every nuance, is correct. … If you want to call it that, spell it p-h-r-e, because ph is a definite article and re is the name of the sun. So I play phre music — music of the sun.”

If you haven’t guessed it, he was as playful with words as he was with his music. In the film at the Carver, he talks about “history — his-story. Not my story.”

“History repeats itself,” he says. “Why should I repeat myself?”

Heavy, heavy.

Adams, who was a key performer at the Birmingham celebration, doesn’t come across like that; his talk was laced with good humor.

He also spoke with pride of the band of youngsters that he has assembled and taught to play jazz in Saturday morning sessions at the Carver. Then he led the band on stage with fine versions of “One O’Clock Jump” and even “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Adams is the son of an African-American newspaper publisher and brother of Alabama’s first black Supreme Court justice, Oscar Adams Jr. But Frank Adams’ passions were music — he played with Ellington, Lucky Millinder and Tiny Bradshaw — and education.

Turning down an opportunity to play with Count Basie, he taught for 47 years in Birmingham City Schools, carrying on the traditions of Whatley and Blount. He continues that work today as director of education emeritus at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.

A local brewing company trotted out a new beer, dubbed “Arkestration,” for the celebration. It sold out quickly. There was live recitation of Ra’s poetry and other works by local residents; there was the film; the young orchestra; and there were giveaways.

But Adams’ remembrances were by far the main attraction.

“It goes on. He [Sun Ra] tells me to tell you that it’s all right to believe in yourselves,” Adams says to the Carver audience. “And that’s Sun Ra for me.”

Somewhere, perhaps in a parallel universe, Ra is smiling.

Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His email address is swind15443@aol.com.

<p>BIRMINGHAM | Sun Ra, standing at night in front of the metal fence surrounding the White House in Washington, D.C., stares directly into the camera. He says he looks across the street but doesn't see a Black House.</p><p>The audience in Birmingham's Carver Theater — many of them older African-Americans, and some veterans of the city's civil rights movements — murmurs its approval and appreciation.</p><p>“You right, brother!” a man behind me says to the image on the movie screen.</p><p>But Sun Ra — who sometimes espoused black nationalism — isn't talking about race. He's expounding his philosophy of the co-existence of opposites. </p><p>If there is a White House, there must be a Black House, he says. If there is a good government, there must be a bad government. Everything must have its opposite to exist.</p><p>The audience in the Carver — home of Alabama's Jazz Hall of Fame — grows silent. It's not accustomed to talks like this. But Sun Ra goes on and on.</p><p>In the film, he looks remarkably like Viola Titus, our black housekeeper with whom I spent many an hour of my younger years. But she never, to my knowledge, walked among ancient Egyptian carvings and talked about the cosmos, as the musician/band leader/poet/philosopher was doing throughout the documentary film, “Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise.”</p><p>The movie was shown at the Carver earlier this month as part of a celebration of the life and work of Sun Ra, who would have turned 99 this year.</p><p>He told some interviewers that he came from Mars or Saturn or even outside of the solar system, but his sister was more prosaic. She knew he was from Earth, “because I got on my knees and peeped through the keyhole” to see him being born in Birmingham on May 22, 1914.</p><p>He died — some say he simply “left the planet” — in the same city on May 30, 1993. There's a grave with his birth name, Herman Poole Blount, on it at Elmwood Cemetery.</p><p>Whatever the case, in his 79 years on Earth he developed an astonishing lifestyle that was centered on music, the only medium by which humanity could be saved, he believed.</p><p>Ra came to music at an early age. In Birmingham, when he was still known as Sonny Blount, he formed an orchestra that was a kind of opposite of the formal, dress-up black band of John T. “Fess” Whatley, whose engagements included toney over-the-mountain society dances.</p><p>Sun Ra's band, by contrast, was a rag-tag ensemble that played in the housing projects and rehearsed endlessly in his ramshackle house opposite Birmingham's train station.</p><p>Eighty-five-year-old Frank “Doc” Adams, a charter member and second executive director of the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame, knew Blount and Whatley well. He played in both men's groups.</p><p>Whatley insisted on precision, proper intonation and the ability to read music. He instilled in Adams a lifelong desire to learn and teach.</p><p>But Blount made a lasting impression, too. </p><p>He would “walk the streets of Birmingham with all the crazy garb on, these Egyptian robes and peculiar hats,” Adams recalls in the book, “Doc,” a beautiful evocation of black life in The Magic City.</p><p>Police would tell Blount to get off the street because he was scaring people. </p><p>He was scaring the police, as a matter of fact.</p><p>But Blount stood up for himself. He told the cops that if they used a billy club on him, they would become paralyzed. He could do it because he was from Mars, he said.</p><p>The police believed him, according to Adams, and left him alone.</p><p>One day at the Masonic Temple, Blount had Adams play a solo. Adams, who doubled on clarinet and alto sax, says that it was horrible, just “a monotony of sound.”</p><p>“But he said to me that it sounded perfect,” Adams recalls in “Doc,” and the remark “built up my confidence … He said what's in you will come out.”</p><p>It did, both in Blount and Adams. </p><p>Blount changed his name to Sun Ra and led a group of like-minded musicians whom he called the Arkestra. Performing all over the globe, he developed a massive cult following that resulted in the issuance of dozens of albums — studio, live, even rehearsals — during his life and after his death/departure. </p><p>A resident at times of places like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia, Ra became one of the most controversial figures in jazz — if what he played can be called “jazz” at all. </p><p>His music was the polar opposite of Duke Ellington's, but they had in common the individualism and the contradictions that made their groups both jazzy and non-jazzy. </p><p>By the end of the 1960s, when I first saw Ra, he was exploring concepts that would take him far afield of musical convention. </p><p>On one of my trips to New York City, I asked the cab driver to take me to Slug's Saloon, an East Village dive where Ra's Arkestra was playing.</p><p>“We don't get many requests to come down here,” he told me. </p><p>The cab pulled up at Slug's. There was a rotting, busted melon in the middle of street. I didn't know what I'd gotten into.</p><p>I walked cautiously inside; the place was tiny. The Arkestra overflowed the stage. I sat next to one of the drummers.</p><p>I soon forgot any trepidations, however. The music and the atmosphere blew them away. </p><p>The Arkestra marched and chanted; members wore lights that flashed at odd moments. Ra played electric piano and organ and bashed away on an electrified “sun harp.” </p><p>The Arkestra would launch into a familiar theme — like Ellington, Ra recycled his older tunes — and then blast off into space, playing some otherworldly themes and sounds. </p><p>Sometimes it roared, sometimes it purred. It went on for hours and hours. The sun was rising when I stumbled out of the club.</p><p>From then on, I was hooked on Ra. I saw him and the Arkestra in Birmingham, New Orleans and, memorably, for three nights in a row in Tuscaloosa at the now-defunct Chukker.</p><p>By the time of his Tuscaloosa shows, Ra had suffered a stroke; he played from a wheelchair. John Gilmore, considered one of the greatest tenor saxophone players in jazz, was stricken with cancer. You could see him heaving for air and gasping between numbers. </p><p>Much of the burden of the music fell on alto saxophonist Marshall Allen, who leads a version of the Arkestra today; trumpeter Michael Ray, who has recorded albums with his own group; and drummer and multi-reed man James Jacson, who is featured prominently in the film, “Sun Ra: A Joyful Noise.”</p><p>In the 1970s, Ra reined in some of his more outre experiments and began to perform music associated with Walt Disney films. Some people say he identified with Disney because of the fantasy, the love of other-worldliness that the men shared; critics saw it as a commercial ploy. </p><p>The Disney era, which lasted through the rest of Ra's life, did help pay the bills — audiences could identify more with “Heigh Ho, Heigh Ho” than with “Outer Nothingness,” one of the brilliant recordings on “The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra” that I fell in love with during the mid-'60s — but it was Disney like it had never been heard before. It was wild, bent, contorted. Far out.</p><p>He and the Arkestra mixed in other, similar compositions with the Disney tunes. Once in a while, they'd throw in a completely “free jazz” piece. Yet Ra insisted that “I have to make sure that every note, every nuance, is correct. … If you want to call it that, spell it p-h-r-e, because ph is a definite article and re is the name of the sun. So I play phre music — music of the sun.”</p><p>If you haven't guessed it, he was as playful with words as he was with his music. In the film at the Carver, he talks about “history — his-story. Not my story.”</p><p>“History repeats itself,” he says. “Why should I repeat myself?”</p><p>Heavy, heavy.</p><p>Adams, who was a key performer at the Birmingham celebration, doesn't come across like that; his talk was laced with good humor.</p><p>He also spoke with pride of the band of youngsters that he has assembled and taught to play jazz in Saturday morning sessions at the Carver. Then he led the band on stage with fine versions of “One O'Clock Jump” and even “When the Saints Go Marching In.”</p><p>Adams is the son of an African-American newspaper publisher and brother of Alabama's first black Supreme Court justice, Oscar Adams Jr. But Frank Adams' passions were music — he played with Ellington, Lucky Millinder and Tiny Bradshaw — and education.</p><p>Turning down an opportunity to play with Count Basie, he taught for 47 years in Birmingham City Schools, carrying on the traditions of Whatley and Blount. He continues that work today as director of education emeritus at the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame.</p><p>A local brewing company trotted out a new beer, dubbed “Arkestration,” for the celebration. It sold out quickly. There was live recitation of Ra's poetry and other works by local residents; there was the film; the young orchestra; and there were giveaways. </p><p>But Adams' remembrances were by far the main attraction.</p><p>“It goes on. He [Sun Ra] tells me to tell you that it's all right to believe in yourselves,” Adams says to the Carver audience. “And that's Sun Ra for me.”</p><p>Somewhere, perhaps in a parallel universe, Ra is smiling.</p><p>Ben Windham is retired editorial editor of The Tuscaloosa News. His email address is swind15443@aol.com.</p>